The moment I walked into Baan Kru Preang, I knew there was something there to be reckoned with. I’d seen clips of the students training and had an idea of what they were about, but all that was from afar. I’d had prior experience learning other martial arts, but now, I stood among them in total silence and waited to learn their art of Muay Chaiya. No amount of pre-training footage could have prepared me for what lay ahead. The focus of their training was not in learning something briefly and putting it into practice. Instead, their preparation was designed to burn their theories and techniques into the students’ muscles,…