Sean Madden: Coaching Champions from Tigers to TBAs
Muay Thai Program Director Sean Madden has been at Easton for 17 years. That is to say, if Sean’s time in the Muay Thai world were a person, they would nearly be an adult.
This year, for the first time since beginning that lifetime, Sean is coaching kids. In his conversation with Easton CEO Mike Tousignant on the most recent episode of the Easton Community Podcast, he reflected on the new experience of working with some of Easton’s youngest students.
Shaping the next generation of Muay Thai fighters
Why now? For many years, Sean preferred to focus his energy on the adult students, particularly advanced practitioners and competitors. But as the years turned to decades, he saw that some of those advanced adult students get their start as children in Tigers Muay Thai classes.
Sean wants to bridge the gap between the kids and adults programs, ensuring that the kids learn everything they need to later be successful in the adult classes. By coaching kids classes, he’s cultivating the next generation of Easton Muay Thai athletes.
Kids who grow up training at Easton gain a ton of experience, often including fights under their belts, by the time they’re adults. The growth of local competition opportunities like the Solid Series Muay Thai scrimmages creates a pathway for kids who want to go from Tigers to the ring.
Sean’s other reason for stepping into the kids program now is that he, too, has grown up. With more years spent coaching, he has more patience. “I adjust my expectations with the kids,” says Sean. “And in general, I found that the kids are easier to teach.”
“Adults come in with a lot of life experience and/or other martial arts experience and it can be hard to change habits that they have,” Sean reflects. On the other hand, young kids are more able to take instructions at face value, without filtering them through preconceived notions.
These days, Sean jumps from teaching a 6:30 PM Tigers Muay Thai class straight into the 7:30 PM Advanced Adults Muay Thai at the Denver academy. It’s a striking contrast. But Sean enjoys what he describes as living in “two completely different worlds between 6:30 and 9:00 at night on the mat.”
Staying hungry
Sean still dedicates the bulk of his time to the adult students, including the Easton Muay Thai fight team. During the podcast, he and Mike reflected on what it means to be “hungry” as a competitor. They agreed that the competitors who really want it–those who are truly willing to sacrifice to be the best–are inevitably the ones who come out on top.
Mike spoke about elite Jiu Jitsu athletes who compete on a shoestring budget, carpooling across the country to big tournaments, sleeping on air mattresses in friends’ academies instead of shelling out for a hotel. They do it for the love of the game, fueled by a dogged determination to be the best. And they carpool home with medals in hand.
At Easton, Sean says, it can be easy to forget how lucky we are. Spacious, beautiful and clean, the Easton academies have an air of luxury that often leaves visitors from other academies in awe.
The training at Easton is technical and tough. But for most members, it doesn’t require much sacrifice. Big daily class schedules and multiple locations with high-level instruction and advanced training partners make it convenient to access.
Sean believes that too much of that ease can rob an athlete of the determination so essential for competitive success. So he looks for ways to encourage the Easton Muay Thai fighters to put some skin in the game, to feed that competitive hunger.
During fight camp, this means all fighters from all academies drive to the Denver location every Saturday for team training sessions. Besides the commute, this means running before training, followed by the hardest sparring rounds of the week.
It’s a small sacrifice, as these things go. But it’s a way to prove to themselves, their coaches and their teammates that they really want it. It’s also a way to get everyone in alignment, for the whole team to understand the Easton competition philosophy and meet the same physical and technical standards.
Traveling to the Thai Boxing Association Classic Tournament
In June, following a rigorous two-month-long fight camp, Sean led a contingent of coaches and nine fighters to the TBA Classic, an annual four-day tournament put on in Iowa by the Thai Boxing Association.
Over the long weekend, the fight team had 21 bouts, going 18-3. Six of the Easton fighters came home as newly-belted national champions.
The adult competitors in the tournament are divided into three classes of fighters. Class A is for advanced fighters with 13 or more bouts. Class B is made up of intermediate fighters with 4 to 12 bouts. And Class C is for novices, with 3 or fewer fights. Team Easton brought home two belts in each class.
The wins, of course, are great. They’re a testament to the effectiveness of the Easton Muay Thai program. “We want to continually go out and test our product and our teaching philosophies on a local, a regional, a national and international stage,” says Sean, “And make sure that what we’re teaching at Easton actually works.”
But Sean also emphasizes that simply gaining so much fight experience in a single weekend is its own kind of win for the team. This was Easton’s ninth year at TBAs. Each year, the fighters and the coaches come home with more knowledge. This accumulation of experience filters into the program as a whole, and each year the fight team arrives at TBAs better prepared.
Looking to the future, Sean is excited about next year’s TBA tournament. It’ll be his tenth. And this time, he wants the fight team to include kids.
