World Muaythai Magazine Feature Story WMM #07

“Guiding the Heart of a Fighter”

By Cameron Fraser

Not just anyone can be a world champion in Muaythai. It takes a certain set of skills and qualities – some definable, some not. One thing that certainly can’t be denied is that every champion learned from someone else, and the relationship formed between a trainer and a champion is mutually challenging and equally rewarding. I had the privilege of speaking with arguably the top three trainers in Canada.

Each of these trainers are pioneers of Canadian Muaythai in their own right, and all were once fighters themselves, each holding championship titles throughout their careers.

Kru Alin Halmagean, trainer of the likes of Shane “Shaolin” Campbell, Dave Hale, and Will Romero. Ajahn Mike Miles, trainer of dozens of champions, including Sandra Bastian, Scott Clark and Contender Asia 2 participant Jesse “Smiles” Miles, among others. Ajahn Suchart Yodkerepauprai, trainer of superstar Clifton Brown, Jenypher Lanthier, Simon Marcus and many other well-known names in Muaythai.

“Finding a great fighter is like finding a diamond in the rough. Once found, the trainer’s skills must command cunning proficiency like that of a masterful jeweller, to take that rough rock and turn it into a gem,” Ajahn Miles says.

“Developing an athlete requires many avenues be taken into consideration; this includes assessing the strong points and weaknesses of that individual to develop a strategy and battle plan for proper training. Once this has been determined, proper guidance and management will be the critical ‘follow through point’.”

Alin Halmagean takes a very open-minded approach. “I look at all my fighters as possible world champions one day, I give them as much attention and advice that I can to help them achieve their ultimate goal, there is a long way to the top and it comes down to them wanting to take this hard long way.”

Ajahn Suchart effectively contrasts the differences in Thai versus non-Thai champions and the challenges faced by both. “Another challenge I have found is champions outside Thailand differ from Thai champions because they start their training later in life, their body flexibility is different, it takes time to break old or bad habits.

Muaythai is not a natural part of their culture, so it is about relearning a new culture and embracing it fully.” Likewise, Ajahn Miles sees the good and the bad in building champions in a culture where training starts later in life.

“Athletes’ careers are short and an individual can only take so much abuse before it is time to hang up the gloves. So I make sure my athletes have a strong and purposeful amateur career (due to commissions in North America we do not follow a class system in Muaythai but follow the amateur and professional status of an athlete). When they turn professional, they are ready to mix it up with the best.”

Kru Alin Halmagean is no stranger to hard work and determination, having moved to Canada very recently from Romania to start again from the ground up so he could pass the proverbial torch to many new champions.

“I have always had to work very hard for everything that I have ever achieved, so I think that hard training and discipline is the most important thing in our sport.

The second most important thing is to teach my fighters to be humble, respect everybody around them, and try to be positive about every aspect of their career. With their wins and losses, they always have to respect themselves, their opponents and everybody else involved in the sport of Muaythai.”

Ajahn Suchart shares the same philosophy of humility and discipline with his champions, and it shows. “Primarily, discipline to train the body daily and consistently training strong, and having a having strict regimen.

I tell my fighters they need three things: good body, good eyes and good brains.” “It’s important for my students to see me train, to know that I am still active. When my grand master Ajahn trained, I saw him training.

I train hard every day, and my fighters see my own commitment as a former champion.” Realising what philosophies and practices these trainers use in developing fighters is very insightful and inspirational, and truly gives a glimpse of the first steps they all take on the path towards building a world champion.

However, I really wanted to find out the qualities one must possess before the training starts – those qualities that lie in the heart of a fighter. “Most individuals (not all) who are truly naturally/physically gifted are the ones who take those natural abilities for granted. Since some of these athletes are gifted, many are not hungry enough to work that little extra round, run that extra mile, and do what is required to be a champion,” Ajahn Miles says.

”Heart… being able to take a punch; not crumbling in the face of resistance; desire, striving to excel, proper body mechanics and proper fighting skills; and conditioning, both the willingness and conditioning to go that extra mile, mental certainty that you have done that something extra in preparation for the bout that your opponent did not, gives an athlete the confidence and added edge they need to win and become a champion. Everyone wants to win, but it is usually the better prepared one who does.”

Kru Alin shares the same idea that the true heart of a fighter is obvious in the early stages. “There is definitely such a thing in our sport, some fighters have a big heart for the fight and that is something you can spot right away, at the very beginning of forming a fighter.

These are usually the people that go all the way in Muaythai.” Ajahn Suchart views the heart of a fighter as one willing to embrace change and challenge. “Absolutely there is such a thing as ‘a fighter’s heart’ and that comes with the desire and discipline to live properly.

To have the heart of a fighter you need to have direction; to have a grasp of the future and a vision of where they are going to be years from now. Fighters have to be willing to change, to embrace Thai culture and history for fighting.

All of this encompasses what I believe is the heart of a fighter.” Ultimately it seems that “heart” really isn’t so indefinable. The qualities of a fighter with heart can be defined and applied with relative consistency.

These qualities are noticeable always, but never more so than after their first bout, especially if the result is a loss. Ajahn Miles finds this especially true. “If they lose their first bout what kind of an attitude can a coach expect to see?

Will they mope and complain or are they back in the gym training harder and soaking up information like a sponge?

If you treat a loss and complain like the bout was a loss, in my eyes you did lose.” “If you take the loss and learn the things you did wrong and what you did right and take it into the gym on the next session, that bout was truly a winning experience. On a test scale of who I have predicted to be champions, I would think I am sitting in the high 80% average.”

Ajahn Suchart and Ajahn Miles are also believers in the test of time, and that time itself is a factor in determining the outcome of a fighter’s career. “On average, it takes about 6-8 years to establish a reputable world champion. Being a champion is a full-time commitment and they need to make it to themselves and to myself, as well. Time tests one’s ability to be a champion,” says Ajahn Suchart.

Ajahn Miles delves a little deeper into that concept. “By the time you get an athlete, who is a champion, you have spent a lot of time working with them. I always remind them that it is really hard work to get to the top and that it is harder to stay in that position. Once an athlete becomes a champion they do not have the time or the luxury to take the position for granted.

I think it is very important for the athlete to be confident in their fighting abilities and themselves, but not to be cocky.” From what I gather, the qualities of a champion can often be seen even before their first bout.

The willingness to train hard, work hard, and make sacrifices are all noticeable traits of a fighter, without question. However, the “heart” of a fighter is what makes the difference. It exists, and it is definable by their determination in the face of adversity and challenge, the dedication they give to their training and lifestyle equally.

The heart of a fighter is not something that can be taught, trained, or created, but it is what inspires a fighter to take the punches, to get back up when they’re knocked down, and to get back in the gym despite the aches and bruises. It’s not just the belts on the wall, but the stories behind those belts that truly define what is in the heart of a fighter.

Evgeni Kotelnikov

By Caitalin Abu Baker-May

Evegni Kotelnikov is a world-class trainer known and respected globally for the strength and quality of his fighters – they are strong, they are exceptionally disciplined, they are skilled in their game.

Mr Kotelnikov, from Kick Fighter Gym in Belarus, opens up and gives us an insight into his perspective as a trainer about finding then polishing and preparing a fighter he sees potential in to become a world class champion.

When I take new students in my group I look at how they work over three weeks. Then I make my first selections. Those who come just for fun I send to another trainer or gym. We can do this because we can’t take all who want to train in our gym. We have a small sport hall and there are too many people wanting to train, as the Kick Fighter Gym is the most famous in Belarus.

Then after six weeks only people with a big heart will continue on. So for me the two main things that are most important are a brave heart and you have to work hard.

What qualities do you look for in a young fighter that would make you stand up, take notice and to be prepared to put the hard yards into?

I look for motivation and I will work with fighters who dream only about being a world champion, and not less. I try to grow this dream in any person in my gym.

So you found a fighter, you saw his potential – tell us how you as a trainer effectively nurture that potential?

I try to get talented boys and girls to train together with champions at least twice a week. I look at how they will try to be in line with the best ones. I can see their eyes and read in their eyes either a big future sport career or a loser’s cross.

Tell us about how it feels when you see that fighter you found, nurtured and prepared, with hands raised standing in centre ring with the newly won and hard-fought-for title belt being strapped around their waist?

I feel very happy in those moments. But I feel much happier when that new champion comes into the gym the next day after he has become a star.

We celebrate with a big cake for all his gym friends and coaches and we have big party. Then it’s back to training, to study more and more.

You often hear the phrase ‘a fighter’s heart’ thrown about within the gyms and outside of Muaythai – to you as a trainer what is and how would you define ‘a fighter’s heart’?

Some children come already with a fighter’s heart and some not. I try to speak with fighters’ parents first of all. The most important stories about children you can hear only from their parents. Sometimes a young boy or girl isn’t brave, but not because of themselves.

Children normally stay under the influence of the bio-energy field of their mother until they are 14-15 years old. This though depends on their puberty time. If their mother is not brave you can do nothing with the child until this time. You can make him very technical but he will turn his back to his opponent in any dangerous situation. Only after he is 15 years old can he be changed.

Some people are of the opinion that a fighter’s heart is something you are either born with or are not, but in argument to that we hear the stories of bullying and starting to train to gain courage and strength enough to fight back.

What do you think, are fighters born or made?

Yes, sometimes this bad story is the main thing that pushes children to go to Muaythai gyms. I started my boxing with the same motivation at the age of 12. Some fighters are born. Many coaches wait their chance and dream that a top fighter will come one day to his gym.

But all good trainers know that they can build a star from any normal boy if the boy wants to be built.

What do you find to be the most frustrating and difficult aspect of what you do?

When I am in bad condition or have no energy I will never start training with my team. They must see me only ever full of energy. I must be an energy donor not an energy vampire. I have my assistant coach; he was also my student before and he helps me at these times.

Counter that with telling us what is the most rewarding aspect to being a trainer for you?

When I teach my students I try to teach myself too. Step by step I try to change myself with them. I feel I am younger because I live and work with young people. These new technologies constantly change, so people must learn all their life if they want to be on top of progress.

Those who stop will not grow. So my work pushes me to study all the time. What has been the one standout highlight moment of your career as a trainer of champions?

When Andrei Kulebin won the WMC World Title in Jamaica and put his medal on my neck and said, “We made this!”

Tell me about discipline and structure. As a trainer how much importance do you place on it, how do you encourage, or enforce it? Discipline is very important I think. How do I achieve this in my gym?

Normally I present my time and my work to the best of my students. Those who are not serious will quickly get less and less of my time. They stop growing and leave the gym, so other students see this and fight for my attention.

Also, I try to speak with them and explain not only how to kick or punch but about other aspects of their lives, about their position in this big and busy world.

If you could only have a single minute to speak to a fighter training and striving to become the next world champion in their weight class, what is the one thing that you tell them and why is that one thing so important to make sure they hear and take on board?

I will say like Mr Ford “You may say that you can, you may say that you can’t; in both situations you are right”. So my boy, you must believe that you are the best. But if you do this for your ego, then God will never help you. Win this title for your country, your parents and those people you like.

Joe Hilton

By Sarah Martin

Australian super coach Joe Hilton knows exactly what it takes to produce champion fighters, as trainer of one of the country’s oldest Muaythai gyms. Coming from a working class family and growing up in country New South Wales, Mr Hilton has a long history with martial arts. He started Judo and Boxing at 12, after moving to the Sunshine Coast, before branching into Zen Do Kai in his mid-teens.

By his late 20s he and brother Roger were running eight Zen Do Kai gyms across the Sunshine Coast region and had began dabbling in Kickboxing. Although the young martial artist was scheduled to fight several times, things did not go to plan, including an injury resulting in a nose operation stopping him from taking one bout, and with a young family, a business and gyms to run, lack of time also kept him on the outside of the ring.

“I do envy the fighters, anyone who gets into the ring is a champion because it takes a lot of guts,” he said. “But that is part of what motivates me, I want to get them through those nerves and past that stage.”

His interest in Muaythai was kindled after hearing Stephan Fox describe the sport’s weapons, including knees and elbows, and in the early 1990s he travelled to Thailand to see Muaythai for himself. He brought the sport back to Australia with him and began training some of the country’s best fighters including Tony Hill, Vince Parkes, Aaron Kirkby, Tony Cockburn and the Elson brothers. “There are so many different things that it takes to become a great,” he said. B

ut it was not the naturally talented fighters who usually became great, Mr Hilton said, but those who had to earn their wins through years of blood, sweat and tears. “It takes months and years – a trainer can’t look at someone who has just walked into the gym and say ‘they are going to be a great fighter’,” he said.

Being a champion also requires dedication to training, the ability to push yourself and a clean lifestyle. “It is hard because a lot of fighters are young and at that age there are a lot of distractions but to be a champion you have to put that aside and you have to give up a lot of things in life,” he said.

The veteran trainer and father-of-two knows better than anyone about missing out on things while spending hours every day in the gym. “It is a big sacrifice being a trainer, the amount of time you are at training, especially when your kids are young,” he said. “But I have no plans to retire any time soon, I wouldn’t give it up for the world because I love it too much.”

In the late 1990′s Mr Hilton and brother Roger separated their gyms, with Roger continuing to run Warriors Muaythai and Mr Hilton starting the Sunshine Coast Thai Boxing Centre.

The gym has always been a family affair, with Mr Hilton’s wife Sharon heavily involved in with Muaythai Australia Federation, of which Mr Hilton is Queensland state president, and also running exercise classes at his gym.

His son also had several Muaythai fights as a youngster, and is now a talented squash player, and his daughter trains Muaythai and Zen Do Kai and works in the family plastering business.

He also considers his fighters as part of the extended Hilton family, and described a trainer-fighter relationship as similar to a parent and their child. “I have trained lots of kids from broken families and you have to get involved in their personal lives and it’s hard,” he said.

He also warned a trainer had to walk a fine line between doing too much for their charges and leaving them to stand on their own two feet. “As a trainer you also have to be able to work with every personality, you have to know how to train each different fighter,” he said.

Mr Hilton’s methods appear to be working, as the Sunshine Coast Thai Boxing Centre continues to produce top notch fighters including Kurt Finlayson, Heather O’Donnell and Brodie Stalder and Ben Tan.

He runs fighter classes three times a day, five days a week, with the first gruelling session beginning at 4.30am. And although every fighter flourished with a slightly different preparation technique, training a world champion was no different from training a novice for their first fight, he said. “You have to keep the fighters as relaxed as you can and don’t stress them out,” he said.

He has also promoted dozens of fight nights over the years since his first event in the Mooloolabah Hotel in 1989, only retiring from promoting in the last few years. But with promoters pushing to have the biggest and best shows with only professional fighters on their cards, Mr Hilton said he would step back into the game to run fight shows focused on amateurs.

“We’ve got to work on the amateurs, if we don’t keep the amateur shows happening the sport will not grow,” he said. He commended his former champion students Vince Parkes and Kurt Finlayson for carrying on the sport and starting their own successful gyms, Mr Parkes in Far North Queensland and Mr Finlayson on the Sunshine Coast.

“They are the only two of my fighters who have turned around and put something back into the sport and that is something to be proud of,” he said. Muaythai has taken Mr Hilton around the world, from Vanuatu to Thailand and Korea, in his role as coach of the Australian Muaythai team and also for fight opportunities with his talented students. “Muaythai gives you so many opportunities, you can travel around the world and forge friendships that last many, many years.

“It is a terrific feeling to be able to say you’ve done those things and if it wasn’t for Muaythai you would probably have done nothing.”

Alan Wong

By Sarah Martin

Realising he would never be a champion helped Muaythai veteran Alan Wong become one of Australia’s most successful trainers. Mr Wong grew up as part of a poor family in Malaysia, helping his father run the family noodle cart business and although always interested in martial arts, his work and study commitments as a youngster left him no time to train.

At the tender age of eight he was beaten badly by a group of older boys, and his and his father’s disappointment at his inability to defend himself made martial arts a priority. Mr Wong began training Shao Lin Kung Fu under well-known master Wu Tak-Ming. “He was a real hard man even though he was 80 years old when I first met him,” Mr Wong recalled.

“He taught me a lot about fighting and discipline.” Mr Wong also dabbled in Tai Kwon-Do and the Malaysian martial art Silat, but all that changed in 1974 when Thai-born Chinaman Somchai Pitpatiyakul took an interest in Mr Wong’s Kung Fu training. Growing up in Thailand Pitpatiyakul, or Ah Chai as he preferred to be known, knew very little of his Chinese heritage and began training with the young Mr Wong.

“He trained with me in the mornings and during our training sessions I soon realised that he had some martial arts experience,” Mr Wong said. The young Kung Fu student pestered Ah Chai until his Chinese friend revealed he trained and fought in Muaythai.

“That was my first contact with Muaythai and I was hooked,” Mr Wong said. “I became very interested watching Ah Chai kick the bag – it was so different and so powerful compared to the way I was taught to kick in other martial arts. “After my first session of pads I was 100 per cent hooked ¬- I had not felt anything like it after six or so years training in Shao Lin Kung Fu.” Ah Chai became Mr Wong’s first Muaythai trainer, taking the youngster across the border to nearby Thailand to train and fight.

But after 10 wins and five losses, the teenager knew he was never going to be a good fighter, let alone a great fighter. “Becoming a trainer was just a progression in my journey of martial arts,” he said. Mr Wong began a Shao Lin club in the 1980s, while studying maths at Australia’s Flinders University.

“Muaythai was unknown then and since I was more experienced in Kung Fu and people were fascinated by Bruce Lee, I decided that it was better for me to teach something that people knew about.” But more than a decade later the popularity of Muaythai began to grow and Mr Wong began training thai boxing at the university, renaming his Shao Lin club the Flinders University Muaythai Club. Initially training about 15 people for fitness only, Mr Wong’s students soon became interested in fighting and he began separate classes to cater for them.

“Having fought before made it a lot easier to train fighters,” he said. “You can pass on the experience to aspiring fighters through the training you provide if you know what it feels like to be standing in front of someone who is about to hurt you.” Over the years Mr Wong has brought to fruition the likes of Sam Harvey, Ethan Shepp - who is now one of Australia’s most successful promoters – and Paul Slowinski.

Training for Mr Wong begins with one key element – getting his fighters really fit. “Getting really fit was the first step and the most important step,” he said. “I have always been strict on fitness, and it is an integral part of my training.” Garnering techniques from other trainers in Australia as well as in Thailand kept Mr Wong’s routine constantly changing, but the super trainer said he still used the methods that brought him success from the beginning.

“But I am always trying new methods from other trainers – if it works for my fighters I will use it.” With the WMC world light heavy weight, cruiserweight and heavyweight champions, WMC state lightweight, junior middleweight and super middleweight champions and the WMC Australian junior middleweight champion all hailing from his gym, Mr Wong knows what it takes to produce the best. And although the traits of a great fighter are discipline, a good stable life and willingness to learn, he said you cannot judge a book by its cover.

“Can you tell a great fighter from the moment they walk in the gym? Not really. It takes more than looks to be a good fighter. “It takes a lot to be a fighter let alone a great fighter and you can never tell with great accuracy if someone will be a great fighter.” Greatness depended on the individual, he said, because “to be great you need to do great things”. WMM

excellent read