My arms are burning and I’m thirsty. The soft, pudgy flesh of my clinching partner pillows under my forearms as I snake and move and turn him, the insides of my legs slapping the sides of his body and occasionally his elbows, where he drops his arms down to try to protect his body. I feel his resistance, which is manifold: he’s resisting my movements, but he’s also pouting. He’s expressing his dislike of this experience with every cell in his body, but he cycles through going limp to...

My last fight – you can watch it here – left me with a souvenir of 8 stitches, right between the eyes. That’s a lucky number for me, I’m into it, but returning to training with a cut on my face is always a slightly tricky process. Surely, everyone who has been with me in the gym for these past 5 years is used to me by now – I’ve been called “Cyborg” and “Iron Lady,” “The Machine,” and “crazy,” because I’m always right back at it. Most of...

There’s a phrase, “it’s 90 percent mental.” I’m coming to realize that the more experience you gain. the more time you spend on a single, focused endeavor, the closer that 90 percent goes toward 99.9 percent. Or maybe it’s even all mental and we can escape the body in some kind of Nirvana-state of Muay… I don’t know yet. The other day an Instagram post from Mental Coach, Kara Loewentheil came up on my feed. I needed it. I have needed it: yesterday, today, probably a bunch of tomorrows. It’s an important...

We are doing a Muay Thai Mental Training Reading Group, together. On Facebook for everyone – you can join here – and on Patreon in live video conference call with my supporters – you can see our first session here. We’ve covered the first two chapters of the book The Inner Game of Tennis, and on Friday morning (Thai Time), we’ll meet and talk about chapters 3 & 4. This is a small, short book that changes people’s lives, as it teaches us to quiet down our Inner Coach,...

The Keto Diet, ketogenesis: The keto diet features very low carb (- 20 g), moderate protein, and high fats, designed to switch the body from sugar-burning to ketone-burning, with suggested benefits of mental clarity, recovery and anti-inflammation, and weight loss (for those that need it), making use of hormone and metabolic responses evolved in humans through long periods of fasting or lean eating. What follows is not an expert telling, you can Google about and find more on all the things I bring up, but it is my telling....

So starts my path to enlightenment. Kevin and I turn down the street indicated on our Google Map directions and it’s pretty clear, immediately, that this isn’t what we’re looking for. Kevin immediately suggests we ask someone, which is super easy for him to suggest because he doesn’t speak Thai, so he never has to do the asking. I’m shy, so I decide to creep down the street on the motorbike first, seeing if maybe, somehow, this street lined with bars might suddenly turn into the kind of street...