Suzanne Harrington: This week I am mostly supporting my kid, and not asking stupid questions

Suzanne Harrington: won't be competing at your local Muay Thai fight-night. Pic: Andrew Hasson

My kid isn’t speaking to me. We haven’t fallen out, he’s just too hungry to talk. 

He’s cutting weight. On the washing line, a metallic silver two piece (like something I’d have worn to raves in the 90s) flaps in the breeze; it’s a heat suit, made from the kind of material favoured by astronauts. You seal yourself into it and sit in a sauna, like a more scientific version of the fat guy wrapped in cellophane in The Full Monty, and sweat out your excess weight.

My son has zero excess weight. He’s hungry because he needs to weigh in correctly before his muay thai fight this weekend, or he can’t fight. The struggle is real. 

Think of that poor Indian wrestler, Vinesh Phogat, disqualified from the Olympics for being 100g over her required weight of 50kg, despite spending all week starving herself in a sauna (probably in a silver space suit like the one on our washing line) and chopping her hair off to make herself lighter. 100g is the weight of a bar of chocolate. How cruel.

My son is not an Olympian, and muay thai is not an Olympic sport, yet, but hunger is hunger. 

Having requested I don’t ask him any stupid questions between now and the weekend, like, are you hungry, we are co-existing in companionable silence, as he swerves food, distracts himself with Call of Duty, and trains on a half empty stomach. 

When I capitulate and ask a stupid question: is everyone at the fight gym psyched for the weekend? I get side-eye. No, because everyone is cutting weight. All the fighters are hangry AF. I feel like Father Dougal. Ah right so, Ted. I back away.

The irony is that throughout his childhood, I steered my son away from activities I thought might be harmful – like rugby. As a lone parent, I didn’t want my child coming home with cauliflower ears and a busted collar bone.

I’d expended lots of energy keeping him and his sister alive and well, and didn’t want sport to undo my good work. Play football, I urged him. Then you can throw yourself to the floor screaming if anyone touches you.

Instead, he got into something that requires participants to punch and kick each other in the head, cauliflower ears seem adorable by comparison. 

But watching him over time, it’s become obvious that muay thai is magic. It’s not just fitness, but a whole philosophy and way of living and being. 

It’s not about uploading muscles in gym mirrors on Instagram; it’s definitely not Conor McGregor.

And it’s growing. In Thailand, the muay thai gyms heave with Westerners, men and women, in peak season.

I had a go myself, training with my son’s trainer in Thailand to see what it felt like, before retreating back to the comfort and safety of yoga. It was brilliant, but nearly killed me.

Muay thai is not for menopausal mummies; my job is to hide the biscuits before a fight, and not ask stupid questions.